Why I'm Teaching My Son To Break the Law

Making the world freer is always right, especially when the law is wrong

Walker BooksIn 1858, hundreds of residents of Oberlin and Wellington, Ohio—many of them students and faculty at Oberlin College—surrounded Wadsworth's Hotel, in Wellington, in which law enforcement officers and slavehunters held a fugitive slave named John Price, under the authority of the Fugitive Slave Act. After a brief standoff, the armed crowd stormed the hotel and overpowered the captors. Price was freed and transported to safety in Canada (that's a photo of some of the rescuers in the courtyard of the Cuyahoga County Jail, below and to the right). I know these details because my son recently borrowed from the library The Price of Freedom, a book about the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue, as the incident is called (PDF). My wife and I used it as a starting point for telling our seven-year-old why we don't expect him to obey the law—that laws and the governments that pass them are often evil. We expect him, instead, to stand up for his rights and those of others, and to do good, even if that means breaking the law.

Our insistence on putting right before the law isn't a new position. I've always liked Ralph Waldo Emerson's sentiment that "Good men must not obey the laws too well." That's a well-known quote, but it comes from a longer essay in which he wrote:

Republics abound in young civilians, who believe that the laws make the city, that grave modifications of the policy and modes of living, and employments of the population, that commerce, education, and religion, may be voted in or out; and that any measure, though it were absurd, may be imposed on a people, if only you can get sufficient voices to make it a law. But the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which perishes in the twisting ...

Ohio Historical SocietyRope of sand the law may be, but it can strangle unlucky people on the receiving end long before it perishes. John Price could well have ended up with not just the law, but a real rope, around his neck, just because he wanted to exercise the natural freedom to which he was entitled by birth as a sapient being.

John Price ended his life as a free man because he was willing to defy laws that said he was nothing but the property of other people, to be disposed of as they wished. He got a nice helping hand in maintaining his freedom from other people who were willing to not only defy laws that would compel them to collaborate in Price's bondage, but to beat the hell out of government agents charged with enforcing those laws.

Emerson would likely have approved. His son reported years later that, upon learning that his children were writing school compositions about building houses, he told them, "you must be sure to say that no house nowadays is perfect without having a nook where a fugitive slave can be safely hidden away."

Much influenced by Emerson, but more down to Earth, Henry David Thoreau went to jail (however briefly) for refusing to pay tax to support the Mexican War. In an essay now known as "Civil Disobedience," he wrote:

Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.

This is the same essay in which Thoreau famously stated, "that government is best which governs not at all." Government was not an institution he held in high regard. He fretted that soldiers, police, and other officials "serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines" and that "in most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones."

Ours being a more academic and less poetic age, Thoreau's sentiments are likely to be captured these days as embodying the divide between Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development. Specifically, they mark the difference between conventional thinkers who believe the law is due obedience because somehow it defines morality, and post-conventional thinkers who believe that higher principles take precedence over the law.

Yeah, I prefer Emerson and Thoreau, too.

Wendy TuccillePersonally, I would say that I love liberty more than any other value, and I don't give a damn if my neighbors or the state disagree. I will be free, and I'm willing to help others be free, if they want my assistance. Screw any laws to the contrary. I don't think social psychologist Jonathan Haidt would be surprised at my attitude. According to him, that's what makes libertarians tick. And that's what my wife and I are trying to pass on to our son.

Slavery and the Mexican War are, thankfully, dead issues in this country, but that doesn't mean there's any shortage of objectionable restrictions and mandates laid upon us by law and the government. Taxes, nanny-state restrictions, business regulations, drug laws ... All beg for defiance. The Fugitive Slave Law may no longer command Americans to do evil, but "safety" rules would have physicians and mental health professionals snitch on their patients. And there's always another military adventure, someplace, on which politicians want to expend other people's blood and money.

I sincerely hope that my son never has to run for his freedom in defiance of evil laws, like John Price. I also hope, at least a little, that he never has to beat the stuffing out of police officers, as did the residents of Oberlin and Wellington, to defend the freedom of another. But, if he does, I want him to do so without reservations.

If all my son does is live his life a little freer than the law allows, then we've done some good. A few regulations ignored and some paperwork tossed in the garbage can make the world a much easier place in which to live. Better yet, if he sits on a jury or two and stubbornly refuses to find any reason why he should convict some poor mark who was hauled in for owning a forbidden firearm or for ingesting the wrong chemicals. Jury nullification isn't illegal (yet), but it helps others escape punishment for doing things that are, but ought not be. No harm, no foul is a good rule for a juror, no matter what lawmakers say.

And, if he wants to go beyond that, and actively help people defy the prohibitions and authoritarian outrages of the years to come, he'll be cheered on by me, his mother, and perhaps even (depending on your views on the matter) an approving audience of spectral ancestors. Our family has long experience with scoffing at the law. Purveying the forbidden or conveying the persecuted are honorable occupations, whether done for profit or out of personal commitment.

As I think our son has already come to appreciate, making the world freer is always right, especially when the law is wrong.

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It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and
a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an
instrument of plunder.

What are the consequences of such a perversion? It would require
volumes to describe them all. Thus we must content ourselves with
pointing out the most striking.

In the first place, it erases from everyone's conscience the
distinction between justice and injustice.

No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain
degree. The safest way to make laws respected is to make them
respectable. When law and morality contradict each other, the
citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense
or losing his respect for the law. These two evils are of equal
consequence, and it would be difficult for a person to choose
between them.

"The nature of law is to maintain justice. This is so much the
case that, in the minds of the people, law and justice are one and
the same thing.

There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that
anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread
that many persons have erroneously held that things are "just"
because law makes them so.

Thus, in order to make plunder appear just and sacred to many
consciences, it is only necessary for the law to decree and
sanction it. Slavery, restrictions, and monopoly find defenders not
only among those who profit from them but also among those who
suffer from them."

Mostly agree, but "These two evils are of equal consequence, and
it would be difficult for a person to choose between them."
They most definitely are NOT. Honoring your personal moral code is
a much, much greater utility than honoring some immoral law.

In the future, the government will use CPS to supress dissent,
by seizing the children of anyone who breaks the law, or exhibits
incorrect anti-government behavior around them.

It's unfortunate that the constitution does not include any
protection on parents rights to keep their children. You have a
right to bear arms. You have a right to say whatever you want. You
have the right not to be deprived of life, liberty or property
without due process of law.

But they can take your children away, and there's no
constitutional prohibition on that, only statutory protections that
shift depending on the mores of society. Drug use frowned upon?
Drug users lose their kids. Homosexuality bad? Gays have their kids
taken away (no doubt it has happened). Nudist? Belong to a wierd
religious cult? Practice polygamy? Keep guns around the house? Let
your kids walk to school alone? Let them sit in the front seat of
the car? Let them drink Kambucha? Any of those things could get a
case worker on you threatening to seize custody. It all depends on
whatever people around you at the moment happens to think is bad
for children.

Don't get me started on CPS, where, in their care, a child is at
twice the risk of death and many times the risk of
molestation.
I believe our founders did not state the right to your children in
the Constitution because it is such an obvious right and, back
then, anyone that came to take someone's child, for any reason,
would have been promptly shot.
I, for one, would LOVE to see more government agents stopped with a
firearm, they should be afraid to interfere in anyone's life. I
believe that fear is the only thing that keeps a government in
check, whole point of the second amendment, and our problem today
is that our government is not afraid of the people.

In a similar vein, I refuse to say the pledge of allegiance
because one cannot have two masters. You are either allied with a
moral code or you can be allied with your flag/government/law, but
they are often at odds. I choose the former. When conservative
family members find out that I won't say the pledge of allegiance,
they cannot imagine why.

This one is actually easy for me: I pledge allegiance to the
United States of America, and the flag for which it stand, one
nation, with Liberty and Justice for all. Just leave out the silly
parts that claim that it can't be broken up (it will be,
eventually) or under God (a mythical being I have yet to meet).
Leave in the wonderful hopes of the country called the United
States. Even Jefferson had clay feet, but he tried... that's all
you can ask.

It is refreshing to meet another pledge refuser. For my part, I decided when I was 12, during the Vietnam War, that I would not say the pledge again. My wife just noticed after 25 years that I didn't and asked why. Most people assume it has to do with the phrase "under God" that was added, but it doesn't. It has to do with a government that is controlled by people who use mass murder to further their own selfish interests and get away with it. A pledge of allegiance is essentially a war cry, and a giving up of our morals and humanity to a leader who has none.

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But you want government to strictly obey the law. How can it do
that without enforcing even its dumb laws when it's required to? Or
should government too be capricious in choosing which laws to obey?
You might use the word judicious when applying it to your choices,
but judiciousness like "rights" and "morality" is in the eye of the
beholder.

The transcendentalists contributed elegantly to the philosophy
of individualism (how jarring it is to have their words juxtaposed
with awful libertarian dreck). It's in American DNA. But as all
those with complex personalities, so is its opposite, an
appreciation for collectivism. It has to be a part of the reality
of our society's worthiness. Unless you want to jettison much of
the progress of the last century (including, hugely, relative
global peace, which has everything to do with collective
action).

It would be platitudinous to say that this tension is healthy
and productive, and maybe it used to be. But one side of this
debate has become completely shouted down by radical antigovernment
lunatics, ones who think freedom means armed vigilante
mini-militias at the National Press Club. There is such a thing as
going too far to the right, and it is at least as ugly as going too
far to the left.

I just switched TV programming providers and watched The Blaze,
which I now get, for 10 minutes. I thought my head would explode,
and had the strange urge to buy survival gear. What I absolutely
cannot figure out is how you Beckians live with this bullshit
polluting your mind. Are you like always frightened and angry, or
what?

I'll quote from The Virtue of Selfishness, under The
Nature of Government:

"Under a proper social system, a private individual is
legally free to take any action he pleases (so long as he does not
violate the rights of others), while a government official is bound
by law in his every official act. A private individual may
do anything that is not legally forbidden; a government
official may do nothing except that which is legally
permitted" (Bolding mine, italics original).

The problem is that too many laws are bad laws, ie drug laws;
conversely too many government agents use their badges and
laminates to justify every action. When this sort of injustice
becomes commonplace, the reflex to defend oneself via force
(mini-militias as you say) is natural. Which is why a limited
government is so important: the more shit they do, the more there
is to disagree with.

I'm not terribly eloquent but I hope you can see the point I'm
making here.

The "so long as he does not violate..." caveat is all-important
when we're talking about the role of government. It's the point of
the existence of government. Libertarians struggle to understand
violations of rights that aren't the most obvious ones, and there's
the inherent contradiction of placing government in charge of the
absolute most important things--but no further, because it's
bad!

My entire point is that one side of mainstream political
dialogue is so radical and dogmatic that it treats every minor
healthcare policy change as a casus belli. I don't want those
people deciding when it's time to start shooting--no matter how
much a serious body count would benefit my side, and not theirs, in
the eyes of politics and history.

Libertarians struggle to understand violations of rights
that aren't the most obvious ones

Not so much. They just disagree with you on what constitutes a
"right", particularly because they don't recognize the legitimacy
of positive rights. It appears a contradiction to you only because
you are either too obtuse or too stupid to understand the
difference.

A right is something you are born with, anything that is a part
of you or born of you. If it requires that you take it from
another, either by force or barter it is not a right. If government
must coerce another to provide it to you, it is not a right.

Since government intervention is usually laid on a foundation of
violence, who's more radical? They people who want to be left
alone? Or the people who want to wave the guns of the state around
and threatening jail time for anyone who doesn't go along with any
damn desire they have?

Relative global peace has more to do with nuclear arms
proliferation across Europe and Asia than anything else. There has
never been an armed conflict between two nuclear powers; everyone's
worried that, even if there's a conventional war between nuclear
powers, the losing side won't accept defeat without going nuclear
against its opponent.

Even a tiny fraction? People don't just transform, at a certain
age, into adults with a fully articulated philosophy. Children
learn from their experience, and watching those around them. Even
if a child can't fully grasp the philosophy, they can learn it
through experience and demonstration, as they grow up.

No, tyranny is being able to dump whatever you want wherever you
want, as long as it fits the regulations of the government. If you
don't like it, though, you can vote, and wait until that changes
something.

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Wasn't slavery supported by the freedom-loving states
rights crowd and it was ended by the federal government through war
and legislation?

Isn't "states rights" just an aphorism for government at a
different level? Being libertarian doesn't mean anti-federal but
pro-state. And, since you guys give government credit for
organizing everything, including property rights, don't they share
some of the blame in enforcing the property rights of slave
owners?

Giving government credit for ending slavery is like a man
beating his wife for 10 years, and then he stops, and declares,
"Wife beating is immoral. Look , I put an end to it. Aren't I
awesome?"

Some Laws, are just plain wrong! Cannabis Prohibition, Gun Bans
that attack our 2nd Amendment rights and many others. Take your
pick! As an Attorney, I can't encourage anyone to break the law,
and so for the record, neither myself or Missouri Marijuana Law and
Reform does so. However, this is a wonderful article, and example
of how each one of us must consider the laws and the attempted
restrictions upon our Lives, Freedoms and Liberties, and act as we
must. I have no doubt that people like Thomas Jefferson, and our
other Founding Fathers, would agree, whether it be breaking a
single law, or the need for an entire revolution.
Steven F. Groce, Attorney

Well said JD, but as Thoreau also would say, your actions speak
so loudly that I can not hear your words. That is, when was the
last time you stood on principal to tell the TSA goon to get out of
your way, or drove through a midnight sobriety checkpoint? Not that
I have the stones for either also, but it's great to preach, but
man, is it hard to do! Perhaps better to make sure your son knows
the nuance that the laws are evil, and the cops may not have proper
authority, but they do have the power. You may be proud of his
actions, but do you really want him in Levanworth?

Very good article that plants a very important question. I do
agree some kind of order is necessary, but I do not think that it
has to be provided on the base of government and politics. We are
being overwhelmed by insignificant debates over politics while many
legislation directly supports things that have a harmful effect on
society (as for example Monsanto and their ties with government
officials). As a big example could serve
immigration policy with its negative consequences.
Politics became more problem than a solution. It is partly
happening because the government agenda is so wide that no one can
fully understand all aspect of each political decision. Therefore,
we are constantly depending on decisions which are based on
non-scientific methods such as ideology, religion, moral, etc.

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